Just the right amount of FANTASTIC!

Today we have a guest post from China Gorman. China was a recent keynote speaker at our state conference.  These are her comments...

China Gorman speaking in the Drury Lane Theater at ILSHRM11

A new casino/hotel recently opened in Las Vegas.  Their marketing campaign was “Just the right amount of wrong.”  Clearly I wasn’t in their target demographic, because, as a consumer, no amount of wrong is right with me.

I feel the same way about conferences.  Especially HR conferences.  And I just attended one that was just the right amount of Fantastic! 

I was honored to have been asked to be the final keynote speaker at the recent 12^th Annual Illinois HR Conference.  With more than 800 attendees – from as far away as India! – this SHRM-affiliated conference really set the bar for excellence in every category! 

What makes this so noteworthy to me is that the conference was organized entirely by volunteers!  SHRM puts on 5 commercial conferences a year.  Only one SHRM event, the big annual conference, is bigger than the Illinois HR Conference.  And SHRM has a full-time staff of more than 9 meeting planning and marketing professionals organizing their conferences – including the 4 events that are much smaller than the Annual Illinois HR Conference!  This just puts into perspective the incredible achievement of the organizing team led by Conference Co-Directors, John Jorgensen and Cathy Plouzek.

From the other keynote speakers (Ryan Estis and Talent Anarchy, Joe Gerstandt and Jason Lauritsen), to the pre-conference Social Media Bootcamp led by Jessica Miller Merrill, to the incredible lineup of concurrent session speakers, to the venue, the food, the social media engagement and coverage – truly, everything about this conference was just the right amount of fantastic!

From someone who knows conferences – especially HR conferences – I offer my congratulations to the full conference planning team.  And I highly recommend that other SHRM state conference organizers contact John and Cathy for tips and lessons learned.  These folks are doing it right!